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| art-sheep.com |
Sarah Kane is, of course, known for her particularly dark and radical writing and is one iconic theatre writer I really wish I'd met. She's a troubled young writer of the past who, almost 20yrs later, still manages to shake up our theatre audiences, or if nothing else, certainly makes us stop abruptly to think, to analyse, to be shocked.
10 mins into 'Cleansed' at the Dorfman Theatre and we'd already lost two members of the audience due to fainting. That tells you most of what you need to know about a Kane theatre experience. As director, Katie Mitchell says: 'We are not shirking any of the violence requested in the stage directions'. 'Kane's stage directions request literal violence. A tongue is cut off with a pair of scissors. Hands are cut off. So how do you do that in a way that is not symbolic?' Well she found the answer to that one pretty quickly it seems. Mitchell embraces the sexual violence, ripping it from the page and brandishing it to audiences that shift uncomfortably in their seats, discover an unusual interest in the lighting rig and distract themselves by digging the dirt from beneath their fingernails - perhaps this is what Kane pictured when she titled the piece 'cleansed' - never before have fingernails emerged so immaculate.
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| nationaltheatre.org.uk |
SPOILERS
The production is set in what seems like a derelict school or prison facility in which it is not just the body that is trapped. The mind is too. Outside the walls of this prison there is nothing but hopelessness with the sound of bombs dropping, placing our abstract narrative amidst a world at war. The war exists inside as well, with a power hierarchy much representative of Nazi brutality during the holocaust. As Kane referenced herself, Roland Barthes said, 'when one is in love, one is in Dachau', so perhaps this informed the location that Kane needed for such a powerful and brutal, sexual message.
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| theartsdesk.com |
The play begins with protagonist 'Grace' in a red dress, watching on as Graham begs for heroine from Tinker, the complex villain of our tale, who sadistically injects it into his eye - a bit of a metaphor for the piece really - injecting pain and brutality into the eyes of its beholders. That's where we lost audience member number one.
Grace, is looking for her brother (Graham). Her journey leads her to him, alive and well and the two duel like lovers, dancing together half-naked until Grace clambers on top of him to make love.
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| thestage.co.uk |
Though Graham is not the only one with affection for Grace. Matthew Tennyson is marvellous as Robin, who not only looks amazing in a dress but who conveys the vulnerability of his character beautifully. He ventures out to buy Grace chocolates before Tinker catches him and feeds them to him one by one, with the same tool he'd cut Carl's tongue off with. We were watching torture, with Tinker instilling his dominance over such a likable and fragile victim. Robin struggles with his feelings for Grace, explaining that he's never been with anyone before. He exclaims 'I love you'. Grace replies 'I love you too'. He is delicate and it is a tragic moment as he shouts for help, for understanding, for someone to talk to, before ending it all with a noose made from tights. Matthew Tennyson is most definitely the highlight of this wholly unbearable experience.
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| metro.co.uk |
We also meet two homosexual lovers, Rod and Carl. Carl declares 'I'll love you forever'. Rod can only say, 'I love you now'. He struggles with commitment. The savage nature of love places them in this facility together, as Carl is systematically tortured, his tongue cut off, his hands cut off, his feet cut off. He is forced to confront exactly what commitment to Rod meant for him, 'I love you, forever'. The very words that had placed him in this nightmare. His final torture, is also his final moment of pleasure, as Rod struggles to support him as they have sex with one another. Soon after, Rod is shot. Carl - his fate is much worse.
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| standard.co.uk |
Our torturer Tinker is just as complex as our other characters. An exotic dancer arrives throughout the piece to perform for him, as he tries to pleasure himself, though it seems that he struggles with intimacy and instead asks, 'can we be friends?'. Grace mimics the girl's dancing, drawing attention to her quest for understanding her sexuality. Tinker is as emotionally trapped as his prisoners. He tells the woman 'I love you'. She replies 'I love you' too. They later have sex, with the girl dirty-talking as they do so, telling him she loves him, telling him to finish 'inside' - only he can't. Suddenly his villainy aligns - he is punishing those around him for their sexuality because he is unsure of his. He cannot be aroused by women or perhaps, cannot be aroused by the very nature of sexuality at all, that he so greatly despises.
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| nationaltheatre.org.uk |
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| nationaltheatre.org |
The final scene emerges. Tinker, out of frustration, shoots the woman dead. Grace is strapped to a bed and wheeled offstage, Carl wheeled offstage too. The two return to stun their audience as i
t all begins to make sense. Grace did not love her brother Graham. Not sexually anyway. Graham was the embodiment of who she wanted to be. She was trapped inside a woman's body and was screaming to find her true self, fantasising about his body. As she seeks help, she is subjected to systematic rape and violence. She tries to mimic the actions of those around her, flirting with the confusion of her gender and sexuality both at once. She explores both the female and male body and is finally confronted with her primary wish.
She reappears as Tinker reveals menacingly that the surgery is complete. He has removed Carl's sexual organs and attached them to Grace, with some very clever, if-not shocking, costume design here. She becomes Graham and despite the turmoil she's been through, says 'thank you'? This is, it seems, the harrowing and completely sickening journey of a desperate woman's journey to become who she was inside. A systematic torture centre, punishing the gender identity and sexuality of its prisoners, again as Barthes said, 'when one is in love, one is in Dachau'.
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| thestage.co.uk |
The piece, although abstract, is extraordinarily clever. The events managing to represent ill mental health, torture, sexual desire, confusion, growth and love, all at once. It is a play about identity about pushing and pulling ourselves through our own sexual discoveries, about growing through our pain (symbolised by the sunflowers and daffodils that appear through the boards). It's about others taking pleasure in our torture and only some of us make it out the other side. Mitchell manages to give this piece new meaning with the growing conversation around transgender identity - the piece portraying the struggle, the betrayal, the hope, the torment, the torture - all parts of this tragic clambering through life in order to find our true selves.
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